How does the Facebook data leak affect you?

As you have no doubt heard, Mark Zuckerberg is facing serious allegations concerning the data leak that has Facebook users up in arms. It has been revealed that Facebook negligently permitted the profiles of up to 87 million people to be used by Cambridge Analytica, a political data-mining firm who specifically uses some form of profiling and micro-targeting to persuade voters.

 

Earlier this month, Facebook disclosed that information about tens of millions of its users was sold to this particular data-analytics firm, which worked with the Trump campaign in 2016 and other Republican candidates. It has not yet been confirmed whether firms other than Cambridge Analytica mishandled user data.

 

The personal data of about 60 000 South Africans may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica, after users installed a personality quiz app in 2013.  The personality quiz app was created in 2013 by Cambridge University’s Aleksandr Kogan and was downloaded by about 300 000 people worldwide. At the time that the quiz went live, it was able to collect data from this app.

 

This shed light on how little Facebook has invested in ensuring developers follow its rules. Selling user data violates Facebook policies. Zuckerberg has apparently expressed how serious this data leak is to the Facebook team and he has assured the media and authorities that they are working on ways to prevent an incident like this in the future. Even with all of the unanswered questions, these hearings have somewhat failed to dig into how Facebook uses the data they collect. It’s safe to say that checking your privacy settings in Facebook could indeed be crucial to your online safety.